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Poland Penal System
Under both communist and postcommunist governments, the
Polish penal system operated under national authority.
Beginning
in 1956, the system was under jurisdiction of the Ministry
of
Justice through its Main Bureau of Penal Institutions.
Institutions were categorized by the criminal records of
the
inmates and the severity of their crimes. Each institution
had a
prison commission that classified inmates and adjusted
their
treatment according to behavior.
Adopted in 1969, the Penal Code of the Polish People's
Republic was one of the most punitive in Europe in actual
practice--although the code's rhetoric was quite liberal.
Nominally, members of the judiciary had free access to
prisons to
investigate prisoner grievances, examine documents, and
assess
prison conditions. In actuality, the Polish judiciary was
completely controlled by the PZPR and therefore had no
capacity
for remedial action. Likewise, codified prisoner
privileges such
as medical treatment and access to libraries seldom
existed in
practice. In 1981 Western experts estimated that the penal
system
managed between 130,000 and 200,000 prisoners--a rate of
imprisonment per 100,000 citizens of 350 to 580, compared
with
212 in the United States and twenty-five in the
Netherlands.
At its inception in 1980, Solidarity began distributing
previously unseen information about Polish prison
conditions.
Patronat, an organization lobbying for liberalized prison
policies, emerged in 1981 but was repressed in 1982. The
political tensions of the early 1980s triggered a wave of
prison
strikes affecting two of every three penal institutions in
Poland
between 1980 and 1982. Press reports on the riots revealed
chronic deficiencies in the system. Food standards did not
meet
human biological needs. Prisoners were routinely beaten,
tortured, and denied medical treatment. Large prison
populations
caused overcrowding, and sanitation and recreational
facilities
were inadequate. Hard labor--the standard method of inmate
rehabilitation--featured dangerous working conditions, and
refusal to work led to solitary confinement and other
harsh
penalties. An uncodified set of prison regulations
introduced in
1974 had given prison guards arbitrary power to inflict a
wide
range of punishments. Those punishments were a key
motivation of
inmate strikes in the early 1980s. Prisoners could
complain only
as individuals, never as a group, and until the riots the
workings of the prison system were completely hidden from
the
Polish public.
Data as of October 1992
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